Imba – A new programming language for the web • Hacker News Board

Disclaimer: I've been following the development of Imba while it's been a private project (for six years now). Lately I've been helping out fixing bugs and improving smaller parts of the language.

Having tags as a proper part of the language is very nice. This just works in Imba:

    
      for event in @events
        
          if event:type == "like"
            
          elif event:type == "comment"

In React I'd have to use `map` and refactor parts into variables. I've been struggling to use React on teams with designers because small design changes can cause rather huge changes in how the code is structured.

Other than that you can think about it as indentation based JavaScript with implicit method calling (`foo.bar = 123` calls the setter `setBar`) and saner handling of `this`.

Re: Imba – A new programming language for the web

#15

Post by nailer » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

SomeoneWeird wrote: post #8

I lot of these things are basically irrelevant if you use ES6/7.

Most of it's good, just a cleaner JS, but it'd be better to drop the classes and lambda-type short function syntax in favour of ES6 classes and arrow functions.

Re: Imba – A new programming language for the web

#16

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 1:37 PM UTC

bashyal wrote: post #12

Thank you for not saying "transpile".

Yup. "Transpile" is "compile" for those who're too young to ever have worked with a compiled language.

Re: Imba – A new programming language for the web

#17

Post by judofyr » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 1:39 PM UTC

viach wrote: post #6

"if Ruby and React had an indentation based lovechild, what would it look like?" Let me guess!... CoffeeScript?

Imba was actually forked from CoffeeScript three years ago. After the fork there's been a bunch changes, both in terms of adding tags, but also when it comes to the object model and variable scope.

- Implicit calling: `foo.bar` calls `foo.bar()` and `foo.bar = 123` calls `foo.setBar(123)`

- Objects have instance variables that's separate from the methods. Well, technically the instance variable `@bar` is just stored as a property with name `_bar` on the object.

- Variables must be declared with `var` and they correctly shadow previously defined variables.

- `do` provides a syntax sugar for the pattern "function as the last argument"

- Optional arguments work together with block parameters

    def timeout(amount = 0, &cb)
      cb(amount)

Compiles to:

    function timeout(amount,cb)
      if(cb==undefined && typeof amount == 'function') cb = amount,amount = 0;
      return cb(amount);
    };

- `self` is a keyword which is a saner `this`, and instance variables are automatically looked up using `self`:

    def end
      @client.on("end") do
         @server.end

Compiles to:

    function end(){
      var self=this;
      return this._client.on("end",function() {
        return self._server.end();
      });
    };

Re: Imba – A new programming language for the web

#18

Post by rushabh » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 1:41 PM UTC

As someone who has been developing using Javascript for 10 years and has seen many frameworks comes and go (including authoring one), this looks refreshingly good on first impressions. Far better than coffeescript or React. Congrats!

Plus, I love the fact that the syntax looks Pythonic :)

Re: Imba – A new programming language for the web

#19

Post by uptown » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

Anybody know the color scheme for the code on this page?

Re: Imba – A new programming language for the web

#20

Post by keithy » Thu, Aug 20, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

judofyr wrote: post #14

Disclaimer: I've been following the development of Imba while it's been a private project (for six years now). Lately I've been helping out fixing bugs and improving smaller parts of the language. Having tags as a proper part of the language is very nice. This just works in Imba: for event in @events if event:type == "like" elif event:type == "comment" In React I'd have to use `map` and refactor parts into variables.…

I would really like to see React do something like this as a shortcut to having to do map. It would be SO helpful.